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(God, wouldn't my job be great if I was just expected to sing in pageants and give it my all and wave a flag on occasion. Also, to keep my hands to myself. I could handle that.)
But those memories of singing my heart out to "America" are memories from Jane Hite Elementary School. There was another elementary school before that one.
St. Matthews Elementary in St. Matthews, KY.
(That's the actual school. Found that pic online.)
My mom and I lived in St. Matthews, right after her divorce from my dad. This had to have been around 1978. As I think about it now, this had to also have been her first apartment all to herself, in her life. That had to have been pretty scary. She was a single mother, recently divorced from my dad and was working her arse off at a veterinarian's office, to help pay for my childhood. Of course, her family were very supportive and helped to raise me and my dad was very proactive in my life, but for five days out of the week, she was my sole parent and guardian.
Later, in the summer before my 2nd or 3rd grade, we moved to Middletown, another suburb of Kentucky and I had some adventures there, but for a while, we lived in St. Matthews. And I attended St. Matthews Elementary School. I have several crazy, random memories of that school. They're fuzzy with age and I'm sure they're all very saturated with pure fiction as well as hard memory, but they're still very real to me. Here are a few that are particularly vivid...
-I remember being sent to the office to get something and finding the teacher across the hall, standing outside her class, very obviously spying on what they did and said, when she was gone. She looked guiltily at me, having been caught spying on her own kids. She quickly ran back into classroom and resumed teaching. I never had her as a teacher, but every time I saw her after that, I thought, "She spies on her students."
-I remember sunny afternoons in the gymnasium, earnestly trying to learn waltzing and country dancing with the other kids. It never occurred to me to cut up and act a fool. I was focused too hard on trying to learn the actual dances.
-I remember the electric excitement of the tornado drills, crouching down with the other kids in the hallways. Being told not to talk, but whispering to each other, none the less. There was always something exciting about every kid in the school being in the hallway at once, whispering to someone next to them.
-I remember taking violin lessons for nearly a full year, but quitting when I learned that they wanted me to play classical music and I wanted to fiddle like Darby O Gill in "Darby O Gill and the Little People." I can still smell the musty smell of my rental violin and the resin that I kept trying to chew. Because they told us not to chew it. It had a medicinal taste.
-I can remember an art project where I attempted to draw two astronauts in space, circling a giant Milky Way candy bar. A pun, you see? I thought this was a hilarious play on words. Everyone else thought that the fat kid was obsessed with candy bars and could probably do with a few less of them.
-I can remember being outside, watching the girls soccer team from the high school next door practice. I was amazed by how fast and smooth they seemed to be. I experienced a yearning then to be with them, to run as fast as they did, that would later, in adulthood take on a definite sexual overtone.
-I remember my menagerie of imaginary friends that I enjoyed for nearly two weeks before I gave up on them entirely. (It was a phase that all the kids were exploring at the time. Once the fad passed, we all moved onto something else, Transformers probably.) I remember that I had nearly two dozen animals friends and that I stood by the front door of the school with the principal, who kindly held the door open for them all to enter. I introduced him to every one of them, "This is Mr. Dadoo. He's a gorilla. This one is Mr. Pawdid. He's a robot. This tiny family of mice are the PeePaws." He said "Good Morning" to every one of them and welcomed them all to the school, enjoying the game as much as I did.
A week later, when I forgot about the imaginary friends, I noted that he was disappointed to only open the door and greet me. I didn't catch that he was disappointed that I'd abandoned our game, until adulthood.
-I remember the day that I had to go to school, but had no clothes. My mom had been stuck on a business trip (she sold industrial wire and cable, at that point) and my grandparents had no school appropriate clothes for me. So, I went to school wearing my sandals, my underwear and my grandfathers t-shirt. My grandmother sewed up the neck a bit, to fit me better and sent me to school that way. A little hippy child, in sandals and a large, white robe. She apologized to me, in the car for having nothing better for me and warned me that the other kids might tease me.
But they didn't.
Every kid I ran into was immediately jealous of my "cool robes." And when they smelled the very clear, Old Spice smell of Grandfather coming off of me, it got even cooler. I walked around the school, proud of my robes and in fact, wore them the rest of the day. And fought to wear them to school the next day, but was sent in my regular clothes, mad as Hell.
-I remember the day that I busted out a plate glass window in one of the classrooms with my bare hands. I was chasing a kid who'd stolen some other kids fancy pop up book. I was playing the hero part and was determined to get the book back. But my new loafers were too slippery and I couldn't make a corner turn quick enough and slid right into a window and busted it out, entirely. Shattered glass everywhere. Amazingly, I wasn't cut in the slightest. But I cried anyways, scared that I would be in trouble for jackassing around.
The memory that I started this whole thing off, though, was from my first childhood pageant. My first speaking line from a play. Any play. I can't remember why the teacher picked me to have the only speaking line for a child my age. Perhaps I was the chattiest child or perhaps because they thought that if they didn't give me something to do, to be preoccupied, I'd knock another window out.
The scene in the show went like this.
The teacher who was narrating was talking about America and some of the freedoms we have and Golly, how great it is to live in America! On the stage already, are 7 posters with a single letter on them, already laid out. At the appointed cue, 7 wee toddlers would come out and kneel behind the posters. At another cue, the kids would lift them in unison and it would spell out "A.M.E.R.I.C.A." And then the narrator would lead us into a rousing rendition of "The National Anthem."
But Wait! Before the song, an unnamed, lovable scamp would run out and say in a lovable way, "But wait! We forgot the most important letter!" and then kneel to raise an eighth, unseen letter. The letter "N", making the word "A.M.E.R.I.C.A.N" and then the people chuckle and applaud the lovable scamp and we launch into an exciting rendition of "The National Anthem" that involved the audience know, caught up in the drama of the moment by the scamp's excitement.
I was that Lovable Scamp.
And that was pretty much the entire moment, except at the critical moment of my performance, I got so excited that I just screamed out one long unknowable pseudo-phrase! "BUTWAITWEFORGOTTHEMOSTIMPORTANTLETTER!" and then smiled proudly at the audience while I revealed the critical "N". ("Check it out, people. Didn't see THIS twisteroo coming, did you?!?") And then they did sing "The National Anthem" with the audience of parents and family members.
After the show, I was so proud, both my mom and my dad made a huge deal about it. In the car ride home, my mom kept asking to hear my line over and over again and I happily obliged her, saying each time with more and more enthusiasm, as we drove home on that warm, summer night. The car windows rolled down to let in the crisp, summer air.
It's now over 25 years later and I'm still hooked on performance of some sort.
Check it out, mom! Did you see me? Did you see me?
Cheers,
Mr. B
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